Walking Dead, “Fargo” Return Down

Despite strong reviews, the second season of FX’s “Fargo” debuted significantly down on its predecessor last night. The show pulled in 1.588 million total viewers and 609,000 in the key demo in Live+Same day numbers.

That’s 40% down on the 2.65 million total viewers and 1.02 million in the key the demo who tuned into the first season premiere. It’s also down 19% and 17% respectively on the first season finale.

Delayed viewing will have an impact though. The first season’s premiere saw a whopping 67% viewer leap when timeshifted viewing was taken into account, the biggest delayed viewing premiere in the cable network’s history.

AMC’s zombie drama “The Walking Dead” also had one of its rare moments of bad news with the sixth season premiere scoring 14.6 million total viewers and a 7.4 rating, down 15% on last year’s premiere. It was enough of a drop that AMC Networks shares closed down 5.1% yesterday.